In the movie Groundhog Day, Bill Murray plays a weatherman named Phil Connors who gets stuck in a time loop in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. Cursed to repeat the same day indefinitely, Connors uses his abundance of time to learn a variety of skills, including how to throw playing cards into a hat, play the piano like a virtuoso, and carve ice sculptures with a chainsaw.
We’re not stuck in a time loop but we can still take a few minutes each day to learn new things or get better at things we already know. I’ve known how to get better at new skills through consistent practice all my life. Practice made me pretty good at playing the clarinet, playing soccer, juggling, dancing, and solving Rubik’s Cubes. Whether or not I had any natural talent for a given skill, practicing it regularly allowed me to develop competence at it, which also increased my enjoyment of that skill. However, my understanding of the value of practice was limited to physical skills until 2017.
For Christmas of 2016, one of the gifts I received was How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. I had heard of the book years ago but never really thought much about it until shortly before I got it. I started reading it in early 2017, taking Carnegie’s advice to read each chapter twice before moving on to the next one. Because of this, it took me two months to read the book instead of one. It paid off, though, as I learned a lot of useful information about communication and interaction with other people. As a natural introvert, interaction with others was always something I struggled with. Many of my interactions would be filled with awkward silences, remarks that I thought would work but instead failed, and a deep sense of discomfort about the situation. Carnegie’s advice dramatically reduced my awkwardness, increased my confidence, and gave me several useful tools to connect with other people in meaningful conversations.
In 2018, I read even more books that helped me better understand and navigate the world around me. As I read these books and put their lessons into practice, I began to change from within. My improved communication skills were merely manifestations of an inner transformation. Several of my bad habits with regards to temperament, patience, and criticism of others began to slip away as good habits took their place. The Bible talks about the importance of cutting off branches that don’t bear fruit and pruning the ones that do so they will produce more fruit, and as I went about gradually abandoning bad habits in favor of good ones, my life became much more fruitful. It was as if the old, dead parts of me were falling off and being replaced by new ones full of life and positive energy. As I continued on this path, I found that this process of death and renewal could be repeated indefinitely, with each iteration taking me closer to the person I’ve always wanted to be.
Benjamin Franklin had a list of thirteen virtues he practiced throughout his life. Each week, he would pick one virtue to focus on in particular (while still practicing the other twelve virtues) and make it his mission to practice that virtue as often as possible during that time. Every time he failed,, he would put a mark on a card as a reminder; his goal was to get as few marks on the card as possible. He’d do the same for another virtue the next week and start over once he had gone through all the virtues. Franklin said that while this practice didn’t take him to perfection, he became a better and happier man because of it. Like Franklin, I now understand from experience the benefits of habitually practicing good virtues. Habits are incredibly difficult to break because we do them with little to no conscious effort, so changing them requires conscious effort. Most of my life had consisted of practicing the wrong things, which made each day far more difficult than it needed to be. Once I made practicing good things a habit, my life became much easier and much better.
While having the books helped and made this way easier than it would have been without them, it’s still difficult to suppress old habits and choose new ones instead. I frequently fail to live up to my own standards, but I fail less frequently than I used to and I’ve learned how to be more forgiving of myself when I fail. Additionally, learning something new is not a straightforward path for me. At first I have no idea what’s going on, then I start to understand it a little bit once I’ve been doing it for a while. As I start learning more, I go back to being clueless and it feels like I’ll be stuck there forever. But once I reach a certain point, it starts to click for me; this is where it becomes much easier and starts to feel natural. It takes me even longer to reach this point when I’m learning difficult things, so I’m more likely to give up right before I start getting the hang of it. However, since I’ve learned enough things of varying difficulty levels, I’ve picked up on this pattern and can use the knowledge that I will eventually get it if I stick with it long enough as motivation to keep going through the difficult stages.
Knowing that whatever I practice becomes automatic, as well as learning lots of life hacks for handling a variety of situations in life, has been a real game changer for me. I never thought that I would be able to improve myself as a person; I figured I would be stuck repeating the same destructive patterns for the rest of my life. It’s been very freeing to see that change is possible and to see how my life has changed for the better in the short time I’ve been on this self-improvement journey and I’m excited to see where it takes me in the future.